Landcom has achieved fourth place in the world and third place across the Asia Pacific in the 2018 Global Real Estate Sustainability Benchmark (GRESB) Developer Assessment.

Landcom is the only government land organisation in the world to participate alongside publicly-listed and private companies in GRESB, which assesses environmental, social and governance management and implementation performance.

Landcom Chief Executive Officer John Brogden said he was delighted to see the organisation achieve such a big improvement on last year’s results, in Landcom’s second year of participation.

“GRESB is an independent, globally recognised benchmarking assessment for the real estate sector, which provides participants and stakeholders with valuable, transparent, internationally recognised evaluation of development activities,” Mr Brogden said.

“It also enables Landcom to track our performance against industry peers, reveals best practice trends, and helps us identify emerging issues.”

GRESB Head of Asia Pacific Ruben Langbroek said Landcom had shown strong demonstrative leadership in sustainable urban development.

“Through its projects, policies and processes, Landcom has shown a clear focus on material topics such as liveability, resilience, and environmental quality,” Mr Langbroek said.

“This has resulted in them receiving maximum scores in the GRESB Developer Assessment for social and governance aspects.

“We’re delighted to have Landcom as the first and only government land developer globally to participate in GRESB.”

Landcom Senior Manager of Sustainability Lauren Kajewski said Landcom’s participation was a key part of its Sustainable Places Strategy, which was committed to industry leadership in environmental, social, economic and governance within the development sector.

“Landcom was assessed on how we manage and address material sustainability issues, such as emissions reductions, resilience to climate change, and the health and wellbeing of our people and communities,” Ms Kajewski said.

“This year we received a score of 90 out of 100, compared to 76 last year, placing us third behind internationally renowned Australian companies Lendlease (1st) and Frasers (2nd). The participant peer average was 67.

“Each year we see strong leadership from Australian development companies participating in GRESB, and we congratulate our peers for their continued strong results.

“We’re aiming to improve our performance in 2019, as we embed our Sustainable Places Strategy.”

This year 903 property companies, real estate investment trusts, funds, and developers participated in the Real Estate Assessment, an increase of six per cent on the previous year.

The assessment now covers more than 79,000 assets, of which more than 49,000 reported at the asset level, across 64 countries and represents more than $USD3.6 trillion in gross asset value.